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InformAfrica – Religion in Africa have changed drastically over many years, from practicing traditional African religions to quickly adopting the western form of religion, Christianity, or Islam which started in the mid-eastern Arabia also known as Saudi Arabia.

InformAfrica web research team is reporting the following findings to inform the African people.

“Africa is home to many different religious traditions. All of the great world religious traditions are in Africa including Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. However, the vast majority of Africans from across the continent identify themselves with one (or more) of three religious traditions: indigenous African religions, Islam, and Christianity.” This is according to information gathered from Michigan State University’s “Exploring Africa“.

What Is Religion? What Does Religion Really Mean?

Religion is said to be the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.

It is also said to be a collection of cultural systems, beliefs, world views that relate ‘humanity to spirituality’ and sometimes, moral values. Many of this religions have their different theories, symbols, and sacred histories that are intended to explain meaning of life or its origin – i.e attempting to tell how the world was created.

When and Where Did Christianity Began?

Christianity is said to have started about 2,000 years ago with Jesus of Nazareth in Jerusalem and his disciples and Islam is said to have started at some point in the 7th century in Arabia, in which many believes Prophet Mohammed was the creator, while some believed he only created the Quran.

Islam and Christianity are not the only religions being practiced in Africa, but they are the two most powerful and two most dangerous religions in the world. This two major religious practices are helping to keep Africa divided and always in conflict.

When Did Christianity Come To Africa?

InformAfrica web research team discovered few or more sources stating Christianity came to Sub-Saharan Africa in the 15th century with the arrival of the Portuguese.

This map shows the ratio of Muslims to Christians in each African country and province. The North is heavily Muslim and the South is heavily Christian.

A BBC story states that Christianity first arrived in North Africa in the 1st or early 2nd century AD. The Christian communities in North Africa were among the earliest in the world. Legend has it that Christianity was brought from Jerusalem to Alexandria on the Egyptian coast by Mark, one of the four evangelists, in 60 AD. This was around the same time or possibly before Christianity spread to Northern Europe.

The BBC Story of Africa also stated that “In the interior of the continent most people continued to practice their own religions undisturbed until the 19th century. At that time, Christian missions to Africa increased, driven by an antislavery crusade and the interest of Europeans in colonizing Africa. However, where people had already converted to Islam, Christianity had little success.”

If not for the spread and strength of the Islamic religion in Africa then, the European-created Christianity would have been successful in converting all, if not most, Africans into Christians; hereby doing more spiritual damage to the African people in the name of religion. Christianity or religion as a whole, was an agent of great change in Africa which brought new opportunities for some and undermined the power of others, spiritually and physically.

Christianity pretty much denied the African people pride in their culture and traditional beliefs – altering their African values. Further more, Christianity helped the Europeans bring western education to Africa, while condemning the African form of literacy.

How Many Muslims and Christians are in Africa?

Pew Research reports that as of 1900, both Muslims and Christians were relatively small minorities in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. The vast majority of Africans practiced traditional African religions, while adherents of Christianity and Islam combined made up less than a quarter of the population, according to historical estimates from the World Religion Database. In little more than a century, the religious landscape of sub-Saharan Africa changed dramatically.

Since then, however, the number of Muslims living between the Sahara Desert and the Cape of Good Hope has increased more than 20-fold, rising from an estimated 11 million in 1900 to approximately 234 million in 2010. The number of Christians has grown even faster, soaring almost 70-fold from about 7 million to 470 million. Sub-Saharan Africa now is home to about one-in-five of all the Christians in the world (21%) and more than one-in-seven of the world’s Muslims (15%), according to Pew Research.

How Many Christians and Muslims In The World?

Before discussing Christians and Muslims population in the world, InformAfrica web research team discovered that the World population, which peaked 7 billion last year (2011), is set to reach over 8 billion by 2030.

Out of this 7 billion estimates, there are about 2.31 billion Christians in the world today, and 1.54 billion Muslims, according to current statistics – with Christians claiming 33% of the world population, and Muslims 22%.

How Was The World Created, From A Religious Belief?

The Bible and the Quran both have similar-to-different stories on how the world was created. They both made mention of heaven and the earth, but not other planets such as Mars, Pluto, Jupiter, Venus, etc. But first, let’s take a close look at what Islam says about creation of the world:

A citation from Sahih Muslim, Chapter MCLV, ‘The beginning of creation and the creation of Adam’, Hadith No. 6707 says:

“Abu Huraira reported that Allah’s Messenger (mpbuh) took hold of my hands and said: Allah the Exalted and Glorious, created the clay on Saturday and He created the mountains on Sunday and He created the trees on Monday and He created the things entailing labour on Tuesday and created light on Wednesday and He caused animals to spread on Thursday and created Adam (pbuh) after ‘Asr on Friday; the last creation at the last hour of the hours of Friday, ie. Between afternoon and night.” (See: answering-islam.org/Shamoun/creationdays.htm)

How about Christians belief of how the world was created?

The Bible made it clear that God is the creator of this world. The book of Genesis tells this theory, but the issue of how he or she created this world has been a mystery for many Christians and a serious debate all over the world for ages. This “God” either created the world from nothing, or created this world from pre-existing matter – these the are two typical answers many are left to believe. In another view, the God who is said to be the creator, is also the one with supreme power to order the destruction of this world.

The book of Genesis states that “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

The book of Genesis claims God created heaven and all things on Earth in six days before resting on the seventh day. He then later created animals, tree, birds, Garden of Eden, including mankind – Adam and Eve. Their is also a complicated story in the book of Genesis about how Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating from the “Tree of Knowledge”, it was after this event the downfall of man began, according to the bible.

We all feel and know something or someone is responsible for the creation of life and the earth, but we have no clue how it happened. So, we must investigate to understand life and all things on earth, either how it was first created or how it lives. This is why life is scientific, and not religious. Religion restricts, and that’s a fact.

How Did The World or Life on Earth Began? (From a Scientific View)

The creation of the world, or life on Earth has multiple theories depending on what anyone chose to believe in. Many scientific studies claim life on Earth began about 4.5 billion years ago when some 3.5 billion-year-old rocks with traces of carbon made up living organisms hit the Earth.

Other scientists argue that meteorites carrying amino acids and other important molecules seeded Earth with the necessary ingredient for life. Supporting the idea: high concentrations of amino acids inside meteorites found on Earth and in gas clouds in space. A wilder offshoot of this theory, called panspermia, suggests that whole bacteria—life itself—first evolved on Mars and then hitched a ride to Earth via small pieces of the Red Planet blasted here by asteroid or comet impacts. But no life has been found on Mars, and the one claim of fossil bacteria in a Martian meteorite, made by NASA scientists in 1996, has been almost universally rejected. More about this can be found in a 2008 article published on USNews.

A history book by Paul Alfred Barton titled “A History of the African-Olmecs – Black Civilizations of America from Prehistoric Times to the Present Era” states that: It is very likely that the very first inhabitants of the Americas were Negritic Blacks from Africa and Asia, who arrived in the Americas earlier than 100,000 years Before Christ. This occurrence would have taken place during a period in human history when the only Homosapiens were Negritic Blacks, and recent migrants from Africa, who entered into an uninhabited North and South America.

To understand this possibility, which is becoming more factual as further evidence is gathered, we must consider the fact that mitochondrial DNA studies done over the years have already fortified the evidence which points to the mono-genetic origins of all humans present to a source somewhere in Central Africa.

Furthermore, all humans came from this African source and developed into distinct races only about 40,000 years ago. This means that the Black race (Negritic) existed for more than one hundred thousand years before all other races came into being, this information was as at the time the book was published (September 2001).

Does God Exists?

This map shows the spread of Christianity, Islam, Traditional religions, and Hinduism in Africa.

To get back to religion, there is no evidence that God ever existed, neither is there any evidence of God creating the world and life on Earth. The “God” which the Bible and Quran say is responsible for the creation of life is misleading or deceptive. The religious theory of life and the Earth, heaven and hell, are nothing but spiritual speculations, and should be understood as such by every African.

The earliest form of alphabet, an ordered set of symbols that represent the basis for a written language, is said to have been developed some 1800-1000 years ago BC by ancient Egyptians. At this time, there was no such thing, name or word as “God”. If you are still wondering if God exists, here is the truthful answer: God Does Not Exist.

When Was The Bible Created?

The bible, a collection of scripture writings, is said to have been written not at once, but bits-by-bits over many several years. The first books of the bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy is said to be dated or was written at about 1400 BC. Some other books of the Old Testament such as Ruth, Samuel, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon is said to have been written between 1050 – 900 BC. The New Testament of the bible is believed to have been written between 50 – 95 AD. There are several information on the web citing the different dates each book of the bible is believed to have been written or gathered. Anyone can make use of search engines such as Google and Bing to find most of this information.

Don’t live by the bible. Don’t live by the quran. Live by Virtue. All we need is One Love. No religion. Fear no one. -Kevin Onuma quoted recently on Facebook.

Really, all we need is ONE LOVE. What is the need for religion when we (mankind) have virtues, naturally? Why let the Bible or Quran control our spiritual being, which is of a higher importance than our physical being? Nature comes first. Love and appreciate every living thing around you, including yourself and everyone else, before you love religion or indulge in it – which is not of a natural occurence. Religion, which is man-made, is division, and can be used as a tool to create conflicts and/or wage war against one another or groups of people.

“God” is only a spiritual misconception. Don’t live afraid. Fear no one.

Talking about war, many Africans seem not to know how the 1st world war started. Below is a brief summary of how world war 1 initiated:

As you may already know, World War 1 & 2 has come to pass, even though many reading this now were yet to be born when the 1st war started. According to information gathered by InformAfrica web researchers, the first world war started due to land dispute or struggle for a particular region (Bosnia) between Serbia and Austria-Hungary. The fight over this particular region eventually led to a war, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Other countries such as France, Germany, Russia, Belgium, Japan, U.S, Italy, etc., later joined the war in support of their allies – making it a world war.

Though the actual cause or root cause of the world war 1 is somewhat broadly-complicated, even deeper than information that have been made available; many believe the killing of “Archduke Franz Ferdinand” immediately pushed both nation involved in land dispute – to war fronts.

Some of the courses of the world war were due to imperialism and militarialization, and as the western world continues to dominate and fight for Africa’s resources – this may eventually lead to a third world war, a very disastrous one – looking at today’s nuclear weapons, technology, and population. Africa must do something, and do it fast – wisely.

Additionally, Afrikans need not forget their ancient past as this is important in reclaiming that which had been taken from us by the Europeans. The Afrikan people must regain their consciousness and come together in unity as one people with one destiny. The spelling of Africa with a “K” instead of a “c” can be understood as a movement to reclaim that which had been taken from us. Search the web to read about Emperor Tirus Afrik and Italian general Scipio Africanus who is said to have conquered Afrika from Emperor Tirus Afrik for the Italians in ancient times. (Mind you, you don’t have to believe everything you read or hear about the story of Afrika or Africa, but let your inner-mind guard you accordingly in true wisdom).

So, fellow Afrikans or Africans, live free of religion – Christianity, Islam, and the likes. In fact, Christianity and Islam have done more harm than good to the African people and the continent. When we are peaceful and have love for one another, what do we need religion for?

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